BizNGO sent our concise chemicals policy reform notes to Congressional staff and reporters. It details how very busy BizNGO has been the last few weeks leading up to the House Bill drop sometime this month.
Biz NGO member, Howard Williams of Construction Specialties, nicely summarizes why the building industry needs full information on chemical ingredients in the supply chain. His blog in The Hill outlines that legislation can be written in a way to protect confidential business information, yet provide critical information on chemical content across the business supply chain. Similarly, Pat Beattie in the Huffington Post Op Ed writes about why the traditional MSDS sheets (Material Safety Data Sheets) are a flawed system of chemical information for product manufacturers and consumers and why B2B chemical ingredient information exchange would be far superior. This lack of chemical ingredient information effectively turns companies into ‘chemical detectives’ as the Biz NGO Chair, Mark Rossi, writes in an article for the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families campaign.
We wait with expectation to see if the House Bill incorporates the three measures our BizNGO participants have identified that would address the need for greater transparency:
1) A requirement to disclose chemical ingredients across the supply chain (with confidential business information protections);
2) A provision to allow the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to collect chemical use data as needed for safety determinations; and
3) A minimum requirement to provide consumers with information on chemicals of high concern in products.
The benefits of more chemical ingredient disclosure from the chemical industry for their buyers down the supply chain and ultimately for consumers cannot be argued particularly from an economic point of view. The multi billion dollar health care industry alone is a case in point. Rachelle Wenger of Catholic Health Care West with its $9 billion in annual revenue and the largest health care provide in California points out that “If chemicals reform reduced toxic chemical exposures that translated into just a tenth of one percent reduction in health care costs, it would save the U.S. health care system an estimated $5 billion every year.” Similarly Kathy Gerwig of Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest integrated health care delivery program with $40 billion in annual revenues states that “It is very time consuming to develop a list of chemicals of high concern, determine which products they are in, identify alternatives and evaluate their safety, performance and cost. .. “We would benefit from public policy that requires manufacturers to ensure adequate safety testing of chemicals in their products and make that data available for review.”
Perkins+Will, the 3rd largest architectural firm globally and another member of BizNGO adds another perspective. 
As Robin Guenther explains “Amazingly, it’s hard to fathom that as architects we don’t always know what chemicals are in the building materials we use. It’s time for this to change. It’s time to bring a new set of baseline criteria to building design and construction by starting with the elimination of toxic chemicals in building materials.” Her perspective made me ponder how well the LEED accreditation system deals with chemicals in building products particularly as, she points out, manufacturers of building materials, furniture and equipment still face no requirement to disclose all of the substances present in their manufactured items.
It is hard to get one’s head around the fact that we are living in a world of untested chemicals. But there is a clear reason why we are in this state of ignorance. When the Toxic Substance Control Act was established in 1976 there were over 60,000 chemicals in commerce with no requirement for any assessment of their health and environmental impact. Since then the EPA has requested data on only 200 of these chemicals. Because 
the public erroneously believes that the government MUST have laws in place to check for product safety or that manufacturers MUST be testing all the products they sale, this state of affairs has been perpetuated for 34 years. The latest President’s Cancer Panel declared the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976 as the “most egregious example of ineffective regulation of environmental chemicals.” Why? The Panel goes on to observe that “because companies are required by TSCA to report information about known health hazards caused by any of their products, to avoid litigation or the costly ban or restricted use of a product, chemical companies generally do not conduct toxicity tests. Under TSCA, EPA can only require testing if it can verify that the chemical poses a health risk to the public. Since TSCA was passed, EPA has required testing of less than 1 percent of the chemicals in commerce and has issued regulations to control only five existing chemicals. Companies are required to provide health and safety data for new chemicals and to periodically renew approvals for the use of pesticides, but historically, chemical manufacturers have successfully claimed that much of the requested submissions are confidential, proprietary information. As a result, it is almost impossible for scientists and environmentalists to challenge the release of new chemicals.”
So there you have it in a nutshell. And that is why BizNGO is focusing on the need for transparency of chemical ingredient disclosure through the supply chain so that we can begin to leave a better business model built on common sense and accountable for the world we will pass on to our children.